As a Pittsburgh native, coal absolutely destroyed the city and the health of the people who lived here. We still have terrible air pollution, but it’s nothing compared to sky blackening clouds of coal pollution that turned the skyscrapers black.
@@blaizegottman4139 in the 30s, you could go out in the middle of the day and no one would fault you for thinking it was almost nighttime. We were nicknamed Hell With the Lid Off
Dude I live in a city in Australia that runs on the shit man. Should see how it's fcked everything here is because of that crap. It's right on the great barrier Reef to so all the industry has fcked it. Remember when they put the LNG plant on the island in and they dreged the harbour, because of all the heavy metals and shit from all the industry from coal, aluminium and explosives maker like Orica it near fcked all the fish in the harbour. Also have a real problem with blowouts from aluminium refiners here.
They are! If you do some digging, they have several mining operations in Africa and South America where the working conditions are nothing short of appalling. Glencore is also not too bashful to employ child labor. There's an initiative here in Switzerland that basically does nothing but try and drag Glencore into court, but they have to fight every step of the way. Naturally.
Fun fact, here in Appalachia miners got tired of being exploited and tried to unionize. The mining companies hired thugs to bully them into submission. The army eventually got involved to break it up and start straight up shooting miners. The army even dropped literal bombs on coal miners to break up the strike. Today, most of that has been swept under the rug and Appalachian communities are still the poorest in the nation, despite decades of sacrifice. My grandpa gave his literal life to coal mining, got black lung, which turned into leukemia and took him.
I have friends in the industry and it's crazy to hear about the unreported deaths on site. People being crushed by machinery, rocks, falls or accidents. It's nuts
Or the much larger number of deaths from the air pollution. Doctors just say you have cancer, heart problems, neurodegenerative disorders, they don't say why. Sure there are other reasons but air pollution is a major one
@@hbt739not entirely, it’s why there are much less unskilled jobs, because they’re easy to do and easy to program in robots whether they be specialized or more general robots
As a german, I wish this revelation would finally reach germany itsself and the potsmoking degenerates who would rather have the fucking industry run on coal than atomic power, because they trust in coal more since it comes from the same earth as their ganja plants in their basement. The irrational headless fear of atomic energy because of a incident in a country with a goverment comparebel to nazi germany in terms of respect for human live, sanity of its leaders and duration of its reign, that still is just a little drop of piss compared to the huge pile of shit of suffering that coal mining has caused that is hidden under the coal mining industrys astroturf is so pathetic it physically hurts. And while storing of nuclear waste isn't a pleasent topic, where the fuck do these hippies plan on storing the fumes of the coal industry? In europes burning forrests or in the amazon jungle that is receiding faster than the lung capacety of a coalminer? If my generation (everyone born after 2000) will be fucked in the future it won't be because of some big bad organisation but because of the retards that don't understand that green energy isn't ready to carry our industry right now and needs more innovation, we can't warm our food with gas or drive our cars with petrol since we have neither of them in germany and importing them will make us dependent on assholes who beat on human rights as hard as they beat on their protestors and supressed housewifes, coal just fucking sucks and relying on it is nothing the word can handle right now and local atomic power plants are the best (although not long term best) way to support our industry right now!
It's not really German hypocracy. The greens only represent like a quarter of the country. And the reason they do this nonsense is, because most of the Greens are transatlanticists. They are willing to throw away any of their principles if Washington tells them to. Most of the German population are not actually agreeing with this.
I live in Kentucky, and the funny thing about the "friends of coal" plates is that a lot of people just buy them because they're the only black license plates on offer. Very often you see the "friends of coal" and "coal keeps the light on" logos covered up with stickers of the vehicle owner's own personal flavor.
Very true, I’m in Louisville and I very rarely see those plates. That’s because people can pay an extra $40 a year for a black Louisville plate, so I see a coal plate once every few months at most. But, when I visit my family in western Kentucky, they’re definitely more popular
"Clean Coal" was picked as a slogan because "Watching-Your-Kids-Choke-To-Death-On-Sulfur-Fumes-While-Destroying-The-Planet Coal" didn't roll off the tongue in quite the same way.
Ordinary things is one of those "Internet Historian Tier" RU-vidrs, He doesn't make videos that often but when he does you can see why they took so long to make.
As an Australian, thank you so much for including all of our struggles when it comes to coal! I live in a town where just about every man is either in the agricultural or mining industry, so everyone turns a blind eye/ flat out refutes climate change. One important thing to note, however, is that the mines are all in the literal middle of nowhere, and with our population almost all living on the coast, miners have to drive 10+ hours or fly to get to their work. That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘mum and pop’ business model coal propaganda has you believe- the small communities they base themselves in are often halfway across the country from the actual mines.
This is the kind of video I expected to watch while I was still in school. Perfect and clear presentation, interesting topic, godly amount of research, and the jokes.
While the Time:Quality ratio isn't a guaranteed thing (see 'Duke Nukem Forever'), when it applies, it is cruel, cruel mistress. The better it is, the longer it takes, the more you want it, the harder it is to wait for it.
@@axos3130 it was an evil business then when they shoved children into mines and chimneys, and its an evil business now, when we have better ways to produce heat and energy
@@left4twenty they used children because they were small. hollywood uses child actors to this day, you going to stop watching movies or write me an essay about how hollywood is an inherently evil business that needs drastic reform and needs to stop hiring child actors?
@@OrdinaryThings DO THE CCP NEXT! You're bound to be more shocked then expected, which is honestly crazy considering they're not viewed in a good light anyways...
The part where he showed an historic german church being destroyed just for more coal mining broke me this vidéo hammers in well how much coal took from us
the thing is, that church wasnt destroyed recently and not because of the energy crisis, it was destroyed some years ago, but still because of lignite mining. But what was missing was, that france still has a lot of nuclear power plants that are currently not working and germany is reactivating some coal power plants to more or less produce electricity because france fucked up its own energiewende.
@@Psychonau we didn’t fuck our energiewiende we did it in the 80s with nuclear, the problem we have now is just terrible timing of fault being discovered in 10 power plants plus delayed scheduled maintenance from covid plus the war making energy prices high! If the war happened one year later there would have been 0 problems!
@@FAB1150 how has just earnestly stating something become a sarcastic joke? Perhaps I'm being sarcastic right now but not as a joke. Or vice versa. Perhaps your lives and the mundanity of them is the true joke not the sarcastic quips or the moronically dribble drabble bibble babble. Perhaps the joke is laying in wait, with its sinister machinations playing a wicked game of keep away with the truth. The funny and sarcastic truth. Also imagine I like copy pasted some Bible verses and stuff as well. I just didn't want to bother.
What I absolutely love about your videos is not only that they are extensively researched and backed-up by evidence that anyone can corroborate for themselves. Nor that they are delightfully entertaining and peppered with witticisms. What I find very enlightening is the moral lesson underpinning your work. Truly, this is journalism at its best.
I am from Kentucky. I remember in Kindergarten when Friends Of Coal in partnership with KU (Kentucky Utilities) did a presentation for our class. I remember them showing us with a model set how downed power lines are dangerous, and I remember them talking about how important coal was to Kentucky. And they talk about “indoctrination in schools” now, wow.
You’ve got such a great sense of humor. I can watch your vids five times over and still pick up on new ones. Keep up the good work (or don’t it’s your life)
@@OrdinaryThings Your comedy and presentation is so similar to Charlie Brooker, would you say he inspired you at all, its fucking class either way, excellent vid as per👏
@@bigbadlara5304 Complicated, global problems require simple solutions, nuclear power is not just outrageously expensive but also much too complicated to be a solution. In other words, up until this point, the rise of technology and industry has given us a collection of knots to untie, and nuclear power is just more knots.
P... P... Pick up a preteen! Then there's the Jimmy Saville War (aka the Falklands) and Brexitstan is currently being run by the Jimmy Saville Appreciation Society (Tories). The gift that keeps on giving... #UncleBulgariaBirthday (don't look it up, I really mean it)
I love your show. It fills me with hope. It brightens my day. It makes me feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, attached to an electric train that is running, indirectly, on coal. ❤
@@OrdinaryThings please. I beg you. Do the CCP and the terrible things they have in the works. An easy start to the subject is simply painting their land green with paint! Stapling leaves to trees and much, much more! But don't stop at the environmental impacts, there's the stealing of almost all "their" modern tech, the planning of steaming Taiwan and their free people as a whole, and the abuse towards citizens. How about the person who was beaten peacefully protesting outside a Chinese police station, IN A WESTERN country! Yup, they've got police stations in both your and my country. Set up to be an embassy style, help here station but holds the most patriotic of Chinese higher ups and officers, how nice! Bonus: theres so much more! :D
The Caterpillar company actually had 'CLEAN, CARBON NEUTRAL COAL' signs up in West Virginia of a few years ago. I thought it was satire when I first saw it.
The energy situation in germany is very complicated. France had half it's nuclear plants offline this year, forcing us to supply them with more energy. The main reason these plants shut down, were low water levels in the rivers. Germany is one of the most impacted country in europe In regards to draught. So can only realy use wind and solar. Which are mostly produced in China :(
As a footnote to your Appalachia segment, coal lobbying has pretty much all but expunged the Mining Wars and Mother Jones from educational history, with global warming itself being a highly taboo subject. One of the things being voted on quite soon is, more or less, the elimination of school boards to be replaced with a direct extension of the state legislature. You can probably imagine why that’s being proposed.
I feel like the more woke everything becomes, the more working-class people deny climate change is a thing. It wouldn't surprise me if this is by design by the big corporations and lobbyists. They're pumping more and more identity politics into everything so that the common man feels disenfranchised, thus pushes in the opposite direction and starts believing absurdities like "coal is clean". This era of fervent tribalism we're currently living in helps corporations and big money in general. There's so many issues that are purposely being associated with the preachy, middle-class, university educated Left, when, in reality, they're issues for the entirety of mankind and the planet we inhabit. The politicians and corpos want us fighting amongst ourselves so that we're not fighting them. Their strategy has proven very effective.
Yes. Granting ones hearts desire always does have a price. Love the cracking one liners and your smoking (hot) jacket! Now I'm going to go off and have a cry.. An *extremely* well done job BTW. The best you've done so far and that is saying quite a lot.
Glad to see Australia talked about here. It's wild how successful the corporate advertising has been. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills talking about how easy and beneficial it'd be to switch from coal and retrain workers into new industries
nah don't worry mate the government is very progressive *builds coal power plant* they're like really helping the environment *subsidizes oil power* and they're making really big steps towards a great economical and environmental future *you get a coal mine, you get a coal mine, and you get an iron mine. natural gas off the coast of Sydney? sounds great, it's mine now!*
@@floppyspud you think that's bad, WA still logs native forests despite the fact that the industry has to be subsidised to the tune of over a million bucks a year. So we're just ending Jarrah and maybe even karri forests as ecosystems and it's not even fucking profitable. I think there's only like 1000 people working in native logging, too, so they'd be pretty easy to retrain and shuffle on to something new. Most of our timber industry is plantations, but somehow we just can't stop leveling natural forests. Infuriating.
As an Appalachian Kentuckian, I can remember when Friends of Coal was everywhere in my elementary school education. I even see pictures in this video of things I see almost every day (including my university’s basketball court) with coal all over it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a staple of our history and still employs people, but we should have not been quite literally indoctrinated like that. I hope you read this comment ordinary things, because this one really hit home
As a Long time Fan of your channel, I’d never thought I’d see the day you’d respond. Or that you would make a video about a problem that affects my home. Thank you very much dude, one of the best channels for real
I would love to see a video on the Idol Industry if you ever get a chance, I don't think I know any other business that has such dirty laundry or treats its public celebrities as slabs of meat at an art show
Every part of the entertainment industry does it. But if you made a video about hollywood's complicity with epstein the video would get deleted and you'd """kill yourself""" by shooting yourself in the back of the head three times
Especially if you touch on k-pop, follow the current story of Loona very, very closely. It’s the most overt example of hyper-capitalism you’re ever going to get.
Well done man. I always enjoy and appreciate the factual, researched statements combined with good jokes. It's very informative, and entertaining as hell.
OMG YES THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MEANTIONING AUSTRALIA!!! :) everything you said was so acurate. my only qualm is that you didnt go far enough. but thats ok. you still did an extremely good job. let me tell you more about it. about skynews, gina rhinheart and the IPA. i promise you it is an interesting read, even if you are not australian i promise you its good. (or just watch friendlyjordies) the IPA is an australian think tank that is basically the legion of doom! they are all funded by all the evil companies; gambling, tobacco and of course coal/fossil fuels. their entire job, is to distort the facts, make bs stats that favor these companies and attack the opposition and its constituence (unions). they are the main go to think tank of the liberal party. like how the republicans get their ideas mainly from the kato insitiute the libs get their ideas from them. The co-founder was Keith murdoch. if the name sound kinda familiar that is because keith is the father of rupert murdoch. the man that owns newscorp and SKYNEWS is is the child company of newscorp. its a circle jerk. the IPA now likes to claim they are a grass roots, traditional, small business funded blah blah blah but it was exposed that gina rhienheart gave 4.5 mill in donations to the IPA over a 2 year period. and of course they have the usual cope of "not showing who their donners are because they respect privacy" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lnFblVQkigY.html&ab_channel=friendlyjordies at 2:00 to give an example of how these guys make bs to satisfy their constituence this is an actual report that they made about "Unions are a waste on state budgets and what they can be used instead of" its 8 pages long. 3 pages are decoration, 1 is a bout the author only 4 pages are a "report" and its just a bunch of pictures ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IPA_Report_The_Impact_Of_The_Prohibitive_Cost_Of_Building_In_Victoria_GR_170203.compressed.pdf dispite the report saying all the public service that money could be used for the IPA constantly shits on the public service. only doing so just to break the unions now enough about that lets go to something funnier. gina rhrinheart. gina is a woman who inherited her wealth. all that cope most billionaires use of "we worked hard to be where we are" she didnt earn it. thats to just give an idea about how sigma this woman is. gina also stated that australia should take example of 3rd world african countries and have workers get paid 2 dollars a day. yes the woman who worked hard all her life wants australians to work for 2 bucks. www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866 and if that wasnt sigma enough gina rineheart wanted to NUKE western australia... why? because she thought it would make mining easier. what a nice lady am i right? finaly skynews. skynews is a anternative universe. everything they say is completly deranged and far from reality. friendlyjordies has a myriad of examples of skynews hypocricy. but basically skynews and newscorp for that matter are extremly pro liberal party platforms and in aus pretty much all media is controlled by newscorp. the pittly few that arent are either hevily influenced by them. for example the project is supposely a "left wing news" but here is a clip of them using that ipa report presenting it as fact ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3xhFbRrabzc.html&ab_channel=friendlyjordies once when i was watching skynews for a laugh one of the ads that played was one about gina and hancock basically saying how great and nice gina is and hackcock are. blatant propaganda. bit of a long read i know. not really related to the topic of coal but still. it had to be said
You should avoid watching friendlyjordies as well. He has some good points, but hes an absolute nutcase Greenie, which I wouldn't say is the best term to describe him. Basically the opposite of skynews and that Murdoch bloke. It's not that the ipa makes up data, but rather they distort it, and make it show different results than what it actually does. It's a miracle what a flip of the y-axis does for peoples interpretation of a graph. They can't just straight up lie to your face after all.
@@SugmaDick I think friendlyjordies is awesome, particularly because of him exposing scandals like Gambling money laundering, exposing the corruption of the LNP - so much so he was targeted by a fire bomb. I don’t watch all his stuff, but dismissing him as a ‘greenie’ seems absurd because of his negative view of the Greens. Ordinary things and FY are closer aligned ideologically than you may think imho
@@man.inblack friendly Jordies is a bit cringe and I don’t trust him, but then again he’s better than sky news and the Slams fist on table THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT
Omg dude, I was loving this. As it went on however, I wondered, how much of this is factual or opinion. And then you got to the topic of Australia. It blows my mind that you managed to properly examine a foreign culture, criticise it appropriately, and still make me fucken laugh about it all. Well done mate, really did your homework to make sure you know what you are reporting. What a world we live in that the best reporting comes from fucken comedy videos
Yup he sure nailed Australia. Literally have had arguments with people who when I suggest solar panels and therefore no energy bill they reply - but I like coal.
How would you even begin to think that stuff like, "coal pollution is a leading killer right alongside smoking and obesity" could be an "opinion"? Give me a break. "Opinion" just means "a fact that makes me uncomfortable" nowadays.
@@bugjams I was using those terms in reference to news reporting outlets where occasionally the editor allows an opinion piece to make front page or something like that.This just being a RU-vid comment section, I used the words loosely, and I know that. The person who monitors this RU-vid channel seemingly understood the spirit of my comment as they pinned it. I don't really understand the latter part of your comment, about an opinion being a fact that makes me uncomfortable. That is not at all the context I had in mind. I am not sure if that is projecting on your end or if you have misunderstood my intentions.
Since not enough people have pointed it out, love this video's framing device of the devil's powerpoint! It's always cool when you format a video as something other than a video essay (even tho video essays are cool too)
the devil's PowerPoint sound like a purple item you'd get in a random leveling dungeon in WoW. or maybe a magic item/artifact in shadowrun or possibly even MtG as a black sorcery.
A couple nice thing that could have been mentioned in the german section: - We used to lead in solar panel production and development. But because certain energy producers could not figure out a way to milk decentralized energy production for their profit, they instead used their influence to end the entire industry. - those same energy producers then got the rights to disown people and dig up centuries old churches, private homes, and forests without having to compensate for the damages they caused. They sort of do, but undervalue houses massively. - The coal they dig up is called lignin. It’s the poorest quality of coal, and is recovered as surface coal which leaves large areas uninhabitable - The Green Party has some footing in reality. Most nuclear power plants have discontinued after the most recent meltdown in japan. Back then most people were already like “yeah we don’t really get earthquakes and tsunamis here. But it might still explode and throw around fallout, cause places to be uninhabitable”. Which is ironic, because of the goddamn coal mines
Die grünen waren sogar gegen das Anti-Atom-Kraftgesetz weil es erneuerbare Energien verlangsamt, oder? Ich erinnere mich nur vage an ne Kinder-Geo, kann also falsch sein
@@eisgnom7383 Da kann ich mich nicht so ganz dran erinnern. Ich kann es mir gut vorstellen, dass es da Diskussionen darüber gab, weil es einen harten drift zwischen idealistischem alten kern und jüngeren, weniger idealistischen Leuten gibt. Und letztere haben ein bisschen mehr einen plan wie sie was machen wollen. Und stehen auch zum Glück irgendwie noch so halb auf dem boden der Tatsachen
Mich stört wie das Video die Grünen darstellt als wären sie ursprünglich für den Kohleabbau in Deutschland verantwortlich. Garzweiler 2 wurde beispielsweise von einer Alleinregierung der Spd genehmigt. Leider hat die darauffolgende Regierung bzw. das Umweltministerium mit Grüner Spitze nichts unternommen (allerdings war diese Regierung auch wieder 85% Spd).
Fukushima should have been a success story about how safe nuclear power is, after taking a direct het from a earthquake and a tsunami, only two of the eight reactors started to leak. and the damage was minimal to say the least, a lot less then is a oil refinery was hit but everyone panicked and jumped on the pro oil bashing nuclear media bandwagon.
As a South African its weird to think that we export masssive amounts of coal but can't generate enough electricity to keep the lights on🤣. #Loadsheddig🇿🇦 P.S. My electricity is shut off as I am watching this masterpiece👍🏻
Got the next few videos lined up. But what would you guys want to see more: Nuclear Video, TikTok Video or Amazon Video? Oh and if you check out my comic and register if you're interested, that'd be very cash money of you: justordinarythings.com/
This is literally the best video you've ever done. I really enjoyed your presentation of it, and I think it's an important call to action to what we can now before our total extinction is all but certain. Also, nice Jimmy Savile jab; I can't believe he actually got away with it his whole life
My father whom worked for a power company as a senior plant operator always called "clean coal" a sham, but never elaborated as to why. This cleared things up a bit. Something I wanted to look into but you beat me to the punch. Nice Job Ordinary Things!
Don't know if it fits your interests, but an entire series on energy in this style might be a good idea. Another video on Nuclear, LPG, Green. Could be a nice series. But you do whatever, you're doing very well so far!
Half of my family came from a coal mining town. I know very little about coal mining but I know many of then were super sick from living there. So when I hear all those bs "coal is safe ads!" I always have to roll my eyes
I grew up just south of the Kentucky coal mining towns (East Tennessee), and not only have I seen and met plenty of people who's lives and health were wrecked by coal and coal companies, I also remember back over a decade ago when that big coal ash spill happened in Kingston TN. I've also seen the abject poverty created when coal mines closed. Visiting Eastern Kentucky is like walking into a third-world country right here in the US. And the towns in the shadows of the Appalachian mountains in Eastern Kentucky and East Tennessee are still some of the most poverty-stricken and drug-addicted places in the US. The politicians from both parties don't even bother to come here. They won't do shit. Thank you for making this video, man. This needs to be spoken about way more than it is.
Burning coal is much better alternative than what’s happening in my country, Canada. Our forests are being cut down, mainly in British Columbia for wood pellet production, which is shipped across country and over seas to United Kingdom to provide electricity rather than air. It is ludicrous insanity. The emissions from these pellets are greater than coal and less efficient per BTU. Pellet burning mills are pure evil, like you briefly mentioned about 10:00 into the video London area cut down their forests and became reliant on coal. The alternative is clearly not cutting down some other country’s forest and this is what is happening.
All these wood pellets solely exist so previously coal power plants can continue to function with a green veneer. They have a short term place but they could not be considered a solution
I work at a coal mine in Wyoming, and I have to say, the cognitive dissonance among the people I work with is staggering sometimes. Hoping to move in to a better mining job, hopefully in Alaska soon...
your videos help me twist my cynicism enough into bearable humour so I don't end myself. I thank you for that. We cannot continue to turn heads and ignore all the horrific acts of greed that take place in the world, or they'll continue to get worse.
Remember when Germany had multiple nuclear plants and eco nuts got them all closed down, resulting in Germany now being in a severe energy crisis and now being forced into mining coal? Crazy.
The nuclear power plants that remained during the energy crisis were laughably small in the energy portfolio, preventing their shutdown would have not solved the energy crisis and only played a miniscule part since their energy output has been replaced with wind energy
I get the sense there's an ulterior motive to nuclear fearmongering in that it's such an efficient energy source that switching to it would put the vast majority of the energy sector out of work. And renewables are talked up as the acceptable 'green' alternatives because the coal/oil people know that solar/wind/hydro aren't nearly productive or reliable enough to actually compete.
